Over 53% voting registered in the high-stake third phase of Bihar Assembly elections

Patna: The third phase of Bihar elections witnessed 53.32 per cent voting on Wednesday with highest being from Buxar at 56.58 per cent. The polling took place for 50 seats in the high-stake third phase, which has Rashtriya Janat Dal president Lalu Prasad's two sons as candidates.

By the end of the voting time, Saran recorded 52.50% polling, Vaishali - 54.82%, Nalanda - 54.11%, Patna - 51.82%, Bhojpur - 53.33% and Buxar - 56.58%.

Voting started at scheduled 7 AM in 14,170 polling stations and ended at 4 PM in 10 constituencies due to security reasons and at 5 PM in the rest 40 constituencies, Additional Chief Electoral Officer R Lakshamanan said.

A total of 808 candidates were in the fray, out of which 71 were female.

The two sons of Lalu Prasad, Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav, contested from Mahua and Raghopur seats respectively.

The former chief minister's political turf Saran, which has 10 Assembly seats, and the seven-seat Nalanda, home district of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, were covered in the third phase.

Of the total 14,170 polling stations, 6,747 were declared as critical and 1,909 as Left Wing Extremist hit polling stations.

All the booths were manned by central forces and live webcasting was done from 716 polling stations.

The prominent politicians, other than the two sons of Lalu Prasad, whose fate was decided in this round are BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav (Patna Sahib), ministers Shyam Rajak and Shrawan Kumar from Phulwari and Nalanda seats respectively, Deputy Speaker Amarendra Pratap Singh (Ara) and BJP's chief whip in the state Assembly Arun Kumar Sinha (Kumhrar).

As many as 1,107 companies of Central Para Military Forces and state police was deployed on the day to ensure peaceful voting. While 50 mounted police force were deployed in general areas, 47 motor boats were pressed into services for patrolling the riverine areas, Lakshamanan said.

In the last Assembly poll in 2010 JDU had won 23 seats while BJP had won on 19 out of the 50 constituencies. Eight was with RJD of Lalu Prasad. But this time with a change in equation the scene is different.

From grand secular alliance, RJD is contesting on maximum 25 seats, JDU 18 and Congress 7.